


With Their Blue Tattoos

by argentumlupine, girlmarauders



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Audio Format: M4B, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Community: pod_together, F/M, Gen, M/M, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 20-30 Minutes, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-10 23:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argentumlupine/pseuds/argentumlupine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlmarauders/pseuds/girlmarauders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU in which Mikey and Frank are tattoo artists with a shop together.</p>
<p>For pod_together 2012. Written by girlmarauders and read by argentumlupine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Their Blue Tattoos

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing about tattoos. None of this is meant to at all represent how tattooing actually works. Takes place somewhere that looks like New Jersey but really isn't.

**Podfic download:** [mp3 format](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2012/B-With%20Their%20Blue%20Tattoos.mp3) | [m4b format](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2012/B-With%20Their%20Blue%20Tattoos%20by%20argentumlupine%20&%20girlmarauders.m4b)

\-----

Mikey turns sixteen in the darkness of semi-illegal tattoo studio, a gun buzzing at the back of his neck. Gerard holds his hand, more for his benefit than Mikey’s, and barely opens his eyes the entire time he’s in the studio. The ride to Brian’s shop in Hoboken had been Gerard’s birthday present to Mikey.

“Relax,” Brian had said and put the gun to his skin.

It _hurts_ , right down into his toes. Gerard squeezes his hand, eyes still screwed shut, and says, “Are you sure?”

Mikey grits his teeth.

“Too late now.”

Gerard goes home after, too queasy to argue when Mikey wants to stay. He doesn’t have a ride home, certainly not from Hoboken, but he stays. He just watches, doesn’t ask questions or try to help, just watches. The words “tonight, tonight” are scrawled in Mikey’s cramped handwriting deep into the back of his neck.

Brian takes a cigarette break in the back alley and Mikey leans against the brick across from him. He doesn’t think the unsaid permission to watch extends to the other, bigger tattoo guys. Brian looks at him through the cigarette smoke for a long time.

“How old are you, kid?”

Mikey doesn’t flinch.

“Eighteen.”

“I’ve already done your ink, kid. How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Mikey admits, after a long pause. He kicks the toe of his worn chucks against the asphalt. Brian exhales, blowing smoke past his teeth, and then reaches into his coat pocket. He drops his cigarette and hands Mikey a worn business card. 

“You’re welcome at the shop whenever you’re not at school,” Brian says, without much inflection. “If you skip class to come here, I’ll kick you out. When you graduate, ask me about an apprenticeship. I might say yes.”

Mikey looks across at Brian with big eyes. 

“Don’t look at me like that just yet. I might say no.”

  


&&&

  


Brian doesn’t trust Mikey with people.

“It’s not your fault,” Bob says. “Brian doesn’t trust anyone.”

He slowly slides the pieces of his gun apart, showing Mikey every movement and piece before laying them out on a tray.

“Now you,” he says. Mikey lifts the central piece and imagines it buzzing, imagines his first tattoo.

“I turn eighteen tomorrow,” Mikey says, slotting pieces together. It’s not about how fast he can do it; it’s about how well he knows the gun.

“I know,” Bob says and scratches his beard. “When do you graduate?”

“June,” Mikey says sullenly. It can’t come soon enough. Bob nods and hands him the gun hook up.

“If Brian won’t take you, I know some guys looking for an apprentice. No one as good as Brian but decent guys.”

Mikey nods. He’s not interested in anyone else but Brian. He turns the finished gun over in his hand, feeling the weight of it, and then passes it to Bob.

“Good work, kid,” Brian says, over Mikey’s shoulder. Bob grins.

The next day, Brian asks Mikey to stay later and Mikey sweeps the shop floor.

“Hey, kid,” Brian says, which is the only way he ever addresses Mikey. “You planned your first tattoo yet?”

When Brian asks about his ‘first’ tattoo, he doesn’t mean the words on the back of his neck, he means the first that he’ll give himself.

Mikey nods. He’s had it planned for months.

“Yeah,” he says and points to one of the classic anchors on the walls. “For New Jersey.”

Brian nods and Mikey knows that’s as much praise as he’s likely to get. Bob snorts.

“Crazy Jersey motherfuckers,” he says, but he gets Mikey’s practice gun out and makes Mikey clean it and set it up under his watchful eye. Brian does the transfer and it’s exactly what Mikey wants.

He does the whole design in deep blue. The lines blur later. He’d pressed too hard, sloppy with nerves. Under the anchor on his left thigh, he etches, with a slight blur, “N.J.”. Mikey doesn’t mind that it hurts this time.

  


&&&

  


“I like your tattoo,” Alicia Simmons says to him in the lunch room three days after his eighteenth birthday. Mikey quickly reaches up and covers the slightly raised skin on the back of his neck. He hadn’t realised that he was wearing one of his t-shirts with the neck cut out.

“Thanks,” he says and she smiles. Mikey feels himself involuntarily smiling back. 

  


&&&

  


Frank Iero doesn’t hide his tattoos. He turns 18 and goes straight to the shittiest tattoo place on the shore and gets a scorpion high on his neck. Mikey thinks it’s stupid. He likes his tattoos because they’re _his_. Frank wears his tattoos like he’s got something to prove.

Mikey sits with Alicia at lunch. People say they’re dating and whisper behind their backs when they hook up with different people at house parties. That kind of thing had always hurt Gerard, but Mikey doesn’t care. 

Frank stops in front of their table, holding his lunch tray tight against him. 

“Hey,” he says and drops his lunch tray across from Mikey without pausing to see whether he’s welcome or not. Mikey frowns and jams his fork into his congealed macaroni so that it stands up.

“Hi,” Mikey says and hopes he doesn’t have to engage in conversation.

“Where’d you get your tats?” Frank asks, looking at Mikey as if he could see through him to his tattoos. Alicia’s giving him a sceptical look.

“Rebel Ink. Brian did them.”

“In Hoboken? Hambone says he had an apprentice,” Frank says, twirling his plastic fork around his fingers.

Mikey looks up quickly.

“Not yet,” Mikey says forcefully. Frank holds his hands up and Mikey can see the flash of ink on his knuckles and backs of his hands as they move.

  


&&&

  


Mikey doesn’t apply to college. He doesn’t take the SATs and then fights with Gerard when he finds out. He takes up smoking so he has something to do with his hands during smoke breaks and learns to drive.

Brian signs him on as a part-time receptionist at Rebel Ink and he works the desk for six hours on Sundays. Mikey straightens his hair and wears shirts with the necks cut out so his tattoo is visible.

He’s not officially an apprentice but he knows a lot more than most trainees. He’s already done his first tattoo.

Brian makes him do his homework at the desk when it’s slow. Mikey retaliates by taking control of the stereo and playing The Smashing Pumpkins and The Smiths. Bob laughs and covers it with a cough when Brian shoots him a look.

“No one’s gonna hire you if you don’t have a high school diploma,” Brian says, when he makes Mikey take his books out at the start of the day. Mikey makes a face but stacks his business textbooks next to the desk.

“You don’t serve anyone if they’re drunk. If they look like they’re nervous or underage, pass them to me,” Brian says. Mikey nods and rolls his eyes behind Brian’s back. Bob snorts but covers it as a cough when Brian looks at him. Brian sighs.

“I’m being conspired against,” he says, but lets it slide.

  


&&&

  


Mikey’s mom makes New Jersey small talk with Brian at Mikey’s graduation, about mutual acquaintances and the body they found in the pond last week. Bob gets ambushed by Frank and has to fight him off to side-hug Mikey's shoulder and congratulate him.

Mikey wears the funny hat and holds his diploma while he takes pictures with Gerard. Brian shakes his hand and claps him on the shoulder.

“How do you feel about that apprenticeship?” he says, smiling at Mikey like he’s proud of him.

  


&&&

  


Mikey isn’t an artist, not like Gerard, but there’s something about feeling the buzz of a gun in his hands. It’s physical, visceral in a way nothing else is. When he finishes his apprenticeship, Mikey bends his neck for Brian and gets his third tattoo: Bullet Bills with wings. 

Frank starts his apprenticeship with Bob three weeks later. Mikey gets a part-time job at Electric Tattoo and another one at the book store and moves into a shitty apartment with Frank. Jamia sleeps over more often than not. Frank’s a little shit but he’s a better cook than Mikey. They work on tattoo designs together and Jamia is always clearing their transfer papers off the kitchen table. Frank does better colour work; Mikey chose to specialise in black and white line art.

Mikey meets Pete by giving him a black eye at his own show.

They slam into each other in the pit. Mikey’s got his elbows up and the other guy hits the ground, hard. Mikey knows his show etiquette, so he grabs the guy’s arm and pulls him back up into the pit. It’s not until Mikey buys him a drink to apologise that Mikey realises he gave a black eye to the bassist from the second openers.

“I’m Pete,” the guy says, and extends his hand. His smile is full of a lot of very straight white teeth. 

“Mikey, Mikey Way.”

They shake hands and Pete downs his drink in one gulp.

“C’mon Mikeyway,” Pete says when he drops his glass onto the bar. “Night’s still young.” Mikey knows that smirk, even on a new face, and he smiles back.

“You got a place to crash?” Mikey asks and Pete shakes his head, his fringe falling over his eyes.

“Not yet,” he says, looking out at Mikey from under his fringe, and Mikey laughs. 

Later, when they’re lying in Mikey’s tiny twin bed, Mikey runs his fingers over the ragged, raised skin of Pete’s bartskull tattoo.

“This is bad work,” he says quietly. It’s awful, actually. Mikey’s made his life with tattoos, and this is raw and painful to look at. Pete nods, looking down at Mikey with big eyes. Mikey leans forward and kisses it softly. He doesn’t think Pete can feel it, not with the way the scar tissue is layered, but Pete still reaches out and pulls Mikey up for a kiss. He can’t ask questions about where you can even get such a badly done tattoo when Pete’s keeping his mouth occupied.

In the morning, Pete’s eye has bruised. Mikey gives him ice in a ziplock bag for it. Pete makes a couple of inane jokes about getting bruises from hook-ups while Mikey makes coffee.

Jamia comes out of Frank’s bedroom later and saves Pete from getting ice stuck to his face, because neither of them realised they were supposed to cover it.

Later, Mikey gets a text from a number saved as “rainy day boy”.

 _hey sweet little dude_ , it says, _wanna be my lover_

  


&&&

  


“If I have to wear a fucking suit, then you have to wear a fucking suit,” Mikey says, when Pete makes a face at his suit jacket. Pete flips Mikey off and shrugs it on. 

“I bet Gerard didn’t have to wear a suit,” Pete says sulkily. 

“It’s Gerard’s exhibition. I don’t think he’s supposed to wear a suit; I think he’s supposed to look artsy.”

Mikey slings his tie around his neck and tries to remember how his mom tied it for Cousin Rachel’s wedding. Pete’s collar is tucked under his jacket and his hair’s sticking up in the back.

Jamia sticks her head around Mikey’s bedroom door.

“Hey, Frank’s found the car keys, are you guys ready?” She pauses, looking between them and smirking. “You guys know you look like you were dressed by wolves, right?”

“I thought it was raised by wolves,” Pete says, as he tries and fails to fix his collar by reaching behind him. Jamia snorts.

“Not in this case, no,” she says and then leans back out the door to shout down the hallway. “FRANK, GET IN HERE.”

Jamia sighs long-sufferingly, makes Pete turn around and stop flailing, and then fixes his collar. Frank sticks his head around the door.

“You called, babe?”

Jamia waves a hand, narrowly missing Pete’s nose.

“Tie Mikey’s tie for him,”

“I can tie my own tie!” Mikey protests but Frank just laughs and pulls it off his neck.

“C’mon man, you’ve got to let me use Catholic school for something.”

  


&&&

  


Mikey grabs Pete by the tie and kisses him quickly before they get out of the car. He doesn’t have a chance for the rest of the evening. It’s Gerard's first major exhibition in the city. Mikey’s proud of him, even if he doesn’t see him for most of the evening because Gerard’s busy making nice with rich people.

“Hey,” Pete says, when they pass Gerard’s black and white photo series. “I recognise that.”

Mikey smirks and lean forward to whisper in Pete’s ear. 

“Check the co-artist,” he says smugly.

He knows the tiny white plaque says “Title: Canvas. Artist(s): Gerard Way, Michael Way.” The photos are all of him and his tattoos. He remembers the first: he’s just seventeen and still in love with his tattoo, showing off the bend of his neck and the stretch of the words across the back. 

It’s hard to tell in the black and white of the last photograph, but Mikey knows the tattoo’s still raw and red because he’s still wearing the cling film on his shin to cover it.

Pete puts his arm around Mikey’s waist and leans into him.

“That’s your new one, isn’t it?” 

Mikey nods. “Yeah, I guess not many people can say they’ve got a Gerard Way original.” 

“Ten years from now you’ll be cutting it off and selling the signature.” Pete says.

Mikey scrunches his nose and bites his tongue. “Gross, Pete.”

“You love me.”

“Somehow, yes.”

  


&&&

  


Bob does Frank’s guns when Frank finishes his apprenticeship and Frank doesn’t stop showing them off for a week.

Mikey quits his job at Electric and he and Frank and, surprisingly, Jamia put all their savings into a down payment on a disused hairdresser’s that they’re going to remodel into a shop.

“Someone with an actual business degree’s gotta look after you fuckers,” Jamia says, when she kicks in her third.

Frank puts his arm around her waist and smacks a loud kiss into her cheek.

“You know I’ve always loved you for your brains, baby?” he says, while Jamia tries to fight him off.

Pete does his coursework in the reception while Frank and Mikey work full-time stripping out the hairdresser’s and remodelling it. Jamia lets them do the heavy lifting and gets all their permits and certificates and inspections so they pass with flying colours.

Sometimes, Mikey watches Pete bent over his papers and books and, seeing the stretch and flex of his barbed wire tattoo, is reminded vividly of the younger version of himself who wanted nothing more than to spend his Sunday afternoons doing homework in Brian’s tattoo shop.

Sometimes, he’ll reach out and press his fingers to the back of Pete’s neck.

Pete always looks up and says, “Hey there Mikeyway.”

The day they finally hang their sign in the front door, Mikey leans forward and kisses him.

“Hey there Wentz,” he says back with a huge grin on his face. “Welcome to Chemical Ink.”

  


&&&

  


To celebrate, Mikey adds a zombie pin-up girl to Frank’s half sleeve and Frank does wings on Mikey’s back, underneath “tonight, tonight”.

Frank offers to give him knuckle tattoos but Mikey’s superstitious about his hands. He doesn’t trust anyone else to work on them and it’s not as if he can do them himself.

“I’m telling you, it’s weird for an artist to have clean hands,” Frank says when they argue about it in their apartment’s kitchen.

“I don’t want anyone working on my hands,” Mikey says, moving dirty dishes into the sink. He doesn’t particularly intend to clean them.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“I really don’t.”

“Mikey’s a lot smarter than you give him credit for,” Jamia interrupts from the doorway, and their argument has to be sidelined so that Frank can pretend to lose to Jamia at roughhousing.

&&&

  


Mikey doesn’t realise their one year anniversary is coming up until Pete starts acting weird. Mikey’s working full time and a half at Chemical, most of it unpaid until they get on their feet, and he’s really not paying that much attention.

Pete clings to him when they fuck, like if he lets go he’ll fall, and kisses Mikey until they’re both falling asleep.

“Are we alright?” Pete asks, just as Mikey’s drifting off. 

“Yeah, of course,” Mikey says, arm around Pete’s shoulders, and then falls asleep.

This was, apparently, the wrong thing to say.

“Are you sure we’re alright?” Pete asks that morning at breakfast. Mikey’s eating his pop tart fast, because he’s late, and just says “yesh, of course” with his mouth full before running out the door. Pete doesn’t even try to slow him down with a goodbye kiss.

Pete stops sleeping over as much. He technically has his own place, but he’s at Mikey’s all the time and it’s disconcerting to not have him around. Mikey gets cold at night now, without Pete as a space heater, and he can’t sleep. The on and off insomnia that’s plagued him since high school comes back with a vengeance and he spends his nights doodling possible tattoo designs that he throws away in the morning.

It’s not until he find the flyer from the show where they met, hidden in the inside pocket of a jacket he hasn’t worn in months, that he realises it’s almost been a year since they met. 

  


&&&

  


Mikey knows that Pete thinks he’s forgotten. He stays late at Chemical and calls Pete when they’ve closed.

“Come to Chemical, I want to show you something,” Mikey says, and then hangs up before Pete can finish saying hello. Letting Pete ask questions wouldn’t end well.

Twenty minutes later, Pete’s piece of shit car stalls in front of the shop. Mikey watches from the doorway as Pete kicks his tires grumpily and throws his hood over his head when he crosses the sidewalk to the shop. 

Mikey has to let him in. He moves to grab Pete’s hand when they pass each other in the doorway, but Pete steps away from the touch, as if instinctively. 

“Happy anniversary,” Mikey says, when Pete’s back is turned, and then sits in his own tattoo chair. 

“What the hell?” Pete says, turning around and pulling down his hood. Mikey sits up slightly to take off his left sock and shoe and drops them on the floor. 

“I’ll walk you through it,” Mikey says. “You won’t fuck up.” He holds out his tattoo gun, offering it handle first.

“Speaking as someone who fucks up a lot, this is a stupid fucking idea,” Pete says, lifting his hands and stepping away.

Mikey frowns. “I trust you,” he says. 

Pete pales visibly. “You really shouldn’t,” he says.

Mikey shrugs. “I got my first tattoo when I was sixteen. I shouldn’t have done that, either, and now look at me.”

Pete nods slowly and then Mikey walks him through the tattoo. It hurts, more than anything Mikey’s had before, because Pete’s a terrible tattoo artist. 

By the end of the night, Pete has etched, quite badly, “SLD” into the side of Mikey’s foot.

“I’m your sweet little dude,” Mikey says, with a pain-endorphin smile, before leaning over the gun in Pete’s hand to kiss him.

“Happy anniversary,” Pete says and reaches out to hold Mikey’s hand.

  


&&&

  


Mikey doesn’t think about it, since he’s been opening Pete’s mail ever since Pete moved in. If he doesn’t, the mail just piles up on the table and Jamia sets fire to it in the kitchen sink in an attempt to scare them into cleaning.

The letter header is from the University of Chicago, it’s addressed to “Mr. Wentz” and it’s very pleased to offer him a position of post-graduate study. Mikey has a long moment where he thinks he might leave it out for Jamia to light on fire.

“I can’t leave New Jersey,” Mikey says, when he watches Pete eat soggy cereal in the morning. Pete doesn’t answer him, just keeps eating until Mikey finally has to leave for work.

In the end, all Mikey had to say was “I can’t leave New Jersey,” because Pete can’t stay and Mikey can’t leave.

“Come with me,” Pete says, but Mikey can’t. He has a shop and a _business partner_ and a family and a life and he can’t leave it, not even for Pete.

His foot hasn’t even stopped hurting by the time Pete’s things are packed.

  


&&&

  


Mikey does Alicia’s chest piece and has to stop halfway through to collect himself because she’s making him laugh too much. He hadn’t forgotten her, just fallen out of touch, and she’s funny and smart. She works at an indie record label in Jersey, promoting bands to clubs and going to shows. She has some beautiful tattoos, ones from all over the country, that Mikey’s jealous of. He likes other artists' work, but he’ll never trust them with his own canvas. His tattoos are _his_.

  


&&&

  


Months later, when they're wrapped around each other in Alicia’s queen bed, Alicia runs her long, clever fingers over the arch of his foot. He can feel when her fingertips bump over the ridges of Pete’s tattoo.

“This is bad work,” she says quietly, looking up at him from where she’s lying over his shins. Mikey feels his lips quirk up into half a bitter smile.

“It was a bad breakup,” he says, and Alicia smiles back at him, as if to say she understands. “Come here,” she says, and drags him down by his hair for a kiss.

  


&&&

  


Frank does his and Alicia’s tattoos, as a wedding present. Alicia asked Mikey to do hers, but it felt like taunting fate, like it might be bad luck. He wants to get this right.

  



End file.
